Ellen Idler, Ph.D.

Ellen Idler, Ph.D. received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University in 1985. Prior to that she also attended the College of Wooster, Union Theological Seminary, and Rutgers University. She taught at Rutgers University where she was a member of the Institute for Health Care Policy and Aging Research. In 2009, she came to Emory as Director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative, one of the University Strategic Initiatives. She is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Sociology, and holds affiliated faculty positions with the Center for Ethics, the Graduate Division of Religion, and the Rollins School of Public Health. Her research and writing focus on aging, perceptions of health, and the social determinants of health, including religion and her books include Cohesiveness and Coherence: Religion and the Health of the Elderly (Garland, 1994) and Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health (Oxford, 2014). Dr. Idler is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and for her work in sociology she is recognized as an Institute for Scientific Information Highly Cited Author and a recent member of Emory University’s Millipub Club (for researchers with papers that have more than a thousand citations). She has long been an advocate of community engaged learning, and has worked with the Senior Mentor Program since its inception.